


Guest Vocals By

by inlovewithnight



Series: Guest Vocals By [1]
Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-17
Updated: 2011-04-17
Packaged: 2017-10-18 05:03:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is based on my own memory of the various Tweets and blog posts around the Believers Never Die Part Deux tour; events occur out of order and with the timeline mashed around a bit both for dramatic purposes and due to faily memory.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Guest Vocals By

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on my own memory of the various Tweets and blog posts around the Believers Never Die Part Deux tour; events occur out of order and with the timeline mashed around a bit both for dramatic purposes and due to faily memory.

It's three o'clock in the morning, they're in the middle of nowhere, and Gabe wants to talk about the end of the world.

Gabe _is_ talking about the end of the world, because Gabe believes strongly in doing what he wants to do when he wants to do it, unless given a really compelling reason not to. Pete isn't trying to give him one. He's half-listening and staring out of the bunk, his eyes aching and burning but refusing to close. He's no stranger to this no-man's-land between awake and asleep, but it's still nice to have company.

Gabe is spooned up behind him, one arm over Pete's waist and one leg tangled between Pete's own, hugging Pete against his chest like a stuffed animal. They've been sharing the bed for most of the tour; it's the only way Gabe gets any sleep. "The energy's all wrong over there, dude," he said the first night he came over to Pete's bus. "Bad chi, or something. I can't sleep. I'm going to go fucking mental."

Since he was familiar with the territory, Pete didn't argue, just moved over and let him in.

Gabe's talking about Ragnarok now, a disjointed version he probably got from a B-movie. "Did you take something?" Pete mumbles.

There's a beat of quiet, and Pete turns his head a little, trying to look back over his shoulder. "Dude? Did you?"

"Before the show," Gabe says finally, loosening his hold on Pete a little.

"That should've worn off by now."

"Maybe I had a little more at the party."

Pete sighs. "Dude."

"Fuck you, seriously, don't you dare get all preachy on me."

"I'm not." He isn't. Or he doesn't mean to be, anyway. He knows Gabe likes to party, and God knows he can't judge that without being a hypocrite of massive proportions. Gabe is heavily invested in his hedonism; it's an image he's honed and perfected into a goddamn work of art, and Pete gets that. If there's anyone who can appreciate that kind of craftsmanship, it's Pete. He's not judging. He's just...

Something.

"I'm not," he repeats, and jabs his elbow into Gabe's stomach. "You're just keeping me awake, fucker. I'm trying to sleep and you're talking about Loki."

"Loki is the _shit_." Gabe smacks Pete's hip hard, but then he pulls Pete closer against him. "And you're a fucking liar. You don't sleep."

"I'd at least like to try."

 _And you're supposed to be resting your voice_ , he thinks, but he doesn't say it. If he did, Gabe would just pin him down and start singing, right in his face, either singing or screaming, and either way they would wake up Joe. Pete doesn't really want to spend a whole day taking punishment at random intervals.

Gabe's quiet for a while, and Pete settles into the hazy gray world behind his eyelids. The rhythm of Gabe's heart against his back and Gabe's breath on his shoulder is soothing. Pete's always thought that sleeping with someone else in the bed is a million times better than sleeping alone, and being married has only made him more sure. He just likes the affirmation that he's not alone, the warmth and breath and presence all proof of the existence of somebody who loves him, one way or another.

"You're a good dude, Wentzy," Gabe mumbles against his neck. He sounds a lot closer to sleep than Pete feels, all of a sudden. Typical Gabe, changing gears without ever hitting the brakes.

"Not good," Pete says. "Just lucky. I try to tell you people that all the time, but nobody listens."  
**  
Pete has wandered the far reaches of the Internet. He has lurked and observed, he has deliberately baited and shit-stirred, he has started rumors and flamewars, both as himself and under pseuds. He has defended himself and tried to set the record straight, too, though he used to do more of that last one before he realized it was mostly pointless.

One thing he's seen that he just does not get is the idea that he's some kind of a mastermind, that he's always got a plan up his sleeve, that there are circles within circles and that whatever he does, it's some kind of front.

Maybe sixty percent of the time, tops, he has a plan. The rest, he's just fucking around as much as anybody else, just trying to hold on and keep his head off the tracks while the train's coming.

Having that image comes in handy sometimes, but what he really doesn't get is when people start throwing around the idea that his plans and schemes extend to the other bands, to his friends. He's using them, or they're just employees. It pisses him the fuck off.

He's familiar with the theories that people come and go from your life and you have to let it happen, that people need to make their own mistakes and you shouldn't interfere even if they hurt themselves, that if you love something you should set it free and sit there like a stopped clock until it comes back.

Fuck that. All of it.  
**  
Patrick sticks his head on the bus and says, "Dude, Gabe's puking all over the parking lot."

Pete looks up from his phone. "So?"

Patrick just rolls his eyes at him and Pete sighs, shoving the phone back in his pocket and following him out. And yes, exactly as described, Gabe is leaning on Victoria's shoulder and dry-heaving over a puddle of everything he already threw up. Victoria's nose is wrinkled in disgust, and she's looking down at where the puddle extends up and over her shoes. Gabe's going to be doing some apologizing with Visa.

But right now she's petting his hair with her free hand and telling him he's her favorite idiot, her voice more than a little slurred. Pete goes over to stand next to them, just out of reach.

"Hey, Pete," Victoria says. "Help me drag this dumbass onto the bus?"

He leans down to examine the puke. "Dude, why is that blue?"

"Little honeys like to buy me mixed drinks." Gabe lets his head drop to Victoria's shoulder. "Fuck, man, I am wasted."

"We did shots to celebrate," Victoria adds. "After the mixed drinks."

"What were you celebrating?"

Victoria shrugs. "Some girl's birthday." Gabe looks up and points vaguely in Pete's direction.

"And the fucking awesome show. Fuck _yes_. FO _B_!"

Pete grins at him and shakes his head. "Where do you want to crash, Gabanti?"

"Wherever's closest. Fuck, Pete. Fuuuuuck."

"That's your bus," Pete says to Victoria. "Give me his other arm."

They drag Gabe across the parking lot and onto the Cobra bus, where Pete drafts Ryland to help fold Gabe up and shove him into his bunk.

"My brother," Ryland says expansively, kissing Gabe's forehead. "My fearless leader, drunk off his ass on the preferred beverages of teenage girls."

"Fuck you, dude," Gabe mumbles, curling up face-down around his pillow. "Where's Pete? _Pete_."

"Right here." Pete sits down on the edge of the bunk, rolling his eyes at Ryland's elaborate, Shakespearean retreat. "What's up?"

"My fuckin' stomach." Gabe laughs and turns on his side, resting his head against Pete's thigh. "Stick around. Crash here. We'll have a slumber party."

"I would, dude." Pete pets Gabe's head. "But your bus smells."

"It does not. Shut up." Gabe closes his eyes. "Fuckin'...awesome tonight."

Pete runs his fingers through Gabe's hair, pushing it back off his forehead. "You gotta slow down, Saporta. You're using up all the party, there's not going to be any left for anybody else."

"'s what they get for not getting there first."

"You're supposed to be being cool, remember? Taking it easy a little bit." He touches Gabe's throat lightly. "Doctors don't lie all the time."

Gabe jerks away, turning onto his back and glaring up at Pete. "God damn it, Pete, not you too."

"I'm just saying--"

" _I'm_ just saying! I've been saying! I've said it a hundred times!" He jabs his fingers blindly at Pete, stabbing him in the arm and chest. "I'm not going to change who I am for them! I'm not going to change how I act, or... _fuck_ them. They don't get to do that, make me change. So I might lose my voice, so what? It wasn't that great anyway."

Pete shakes his head, opening his mouth to tell Gabe to shut up, but Gabe jabs at him again, almost hitting him in the face this time.

"You lose everything, Pete." The alcohol makes Gabe's voice rougher, like he's halfway to a shout.  
"Everything goes away. It's _all_ temporary. So what the fuck is the point of worrying about it?"

Pete looks down at his hands, splayed on the sheets. Even if Gabe was sober there was no way to explain to him that what he's saying is Pete's greatest fear, the thing out there with him in that hazy three AM desert.

If he could explain it, Gabe probably wouldn't care.

"Fuck," Gabe mutters, closing his eyes and turning his face into the pillow again. "Fuck."

Pete gets up and walks out of the bunks, passing Ryland on his way off the bus. "He should be just tons of fun in the morning," Pete tells him. "Good luck with that."  
**  
Dealing with Gabe lately is like handling something hot, or sharp. Every so often you drop it, because it's hurting you, and you're frustrated because you can't make it stop. Pete suspects the rest of the Cobras have been taking shifts on Gabe-duty.

Actually, that's probably why Gabe has been sleeping on Pete's bus.

But Pete has a masochistic streak. And he doesn't mind hot people, or sharp people, when they're _his_ people. He just puts on his imaginary asbestos mittens and picks them up again.  
**  
Gabe is walking backwards down the alley, singing "Tiffany Blews" off-key. He has his dick out, holding it with one hand like he's going to start pissing and walking backwards at the same time, which would probably qualify him for the Olympics or something. But if anyone could pull it off, it would be Gabe, and he'd make them film it and put it on the Internet.

"Like a little black dress," Gabe belts out. "Like a faded bloom."

Pete laughs. "Not the words, dude." He feels good, warm and buzzing and just drunk enough. Ashlee and Bronx are in Texas, very busy with family time, so he won't call them until the morning. He texted her a picture earlier, a heart sketched on a napkin, and she'd replied by letting Bronx keysmash her phone. All was right with that world, so he could get a little lit in this one.

As usual, Gabe is way ahead of him in that department.

"Who the fuck _knows_ what the words are with P. Stump?" Gabe waves his dick at Patrick, who gives him a solemn thumbs-up. "You know I love you, man, you're like a brother to me. A short, white brother. But you don't e-fucking-nunciate, baby."

"No one's ever told me that before, Gabe. I think I have to go cry now."

"That's my job, man, I bring truth and enlightenment to all." Gabe finally turns to face the wall, bracing himself with his free hand and closing his eyes, hitting the "oh-ohs" while he gets down to business.

Just as the cop comes around the corner. Of course.

The next few minutes are kind of a blur. The cop yells and Gabe yells back, Patrick says "Oh, shit," and ducks back into the bar (Pete figures he's going in search of someone who can play the role of authority figure, and he's rarely wrong about Patrick), and it seems like between one blink and the next Gabe is shoved up against the wall and getting the cuffs put on.

 _Shit. Shit. Shit._ "Officer," Pete says, trying to angle himself between the cop and Gabe without crossing the invisible lines that would make him threatening or interfering. "Officer, hey, wait, please."

The cop isn't impressed in the slightest, but he looks at Pete like he'll let him make his case. If only he _had_ a case, besides _he's a douchebag but I do in fact claim him as one of **my** douchebags and also we have a tour to finish that does not need bad PR._

"We were just heading back to our hotel," he says, trying to look as nonthreatening as he can, opening his eyes wider and shrugging his shoulders that weird way that makes him look shorter. "Had a little too much to drink, I guess, but we're leaving now, really. We'll be out of your hair. Gone."

Gabe looks over his shoulder like he's going to say something, and Pete gives him a look, something between panicked and furious because goddamn it, Gabe, do not make this worse to prove some kind of _point_.

"You'd better take all of your buddies with you," the cop says after a minute, undoing the cuffs. "Next one who comes out here and pulls some bullshit, I'm taking them in, got it?"

Pete does a fast mental tally of who's left in the bar. Most likely to cause trouble are Trace or anyone from All Time Low, and he can have the guys round them up. "Absolutely. Thank you, sir."

The cop shakes his head and steps back, giving Gabe a look of disgust. Pete grabs Gabe's shoulder and hauls him away before he can get any other ideas.

"Holy shit, dude," Gabe laughs, stumbling along with him. "Thought you were gonna have to offer to blow him to get me out of that one."

"Zip up your pants," Pete mutters, fingers twisting the fabric of Gabe's hoodie. "Jesus Christ."

"Listen to you giving orders, Mr. Boss-man, Mr. In-Charge Guy."

"Shut _up_. God." Pete wants to scream, but he's not sure it's directed at Gabe or at the universe in general. "Don't talk until we get to the hotel."

Patrick comes back out of the bar with Joe, who apparently got drafted to fill the role of authority figure. It would've been more convincing if he was sober.

"Everything okay?" Patrick asks, glancing down the alley.

"Clear everybody out," Pete says wearily. "I think this tour is going to need a curfew."  
**  
Gabe Twitters about the whole thing, of course. Pete gets a text from Ashlee a few minutes after the Tweet goes through.

 _u ok baby?_

He smiles a little and types back. _100 prcnt. why do I put up w/them?_

 _u luv them_

 _luv u. luv bb_

 _u luv every1_

He reads that two or three times and laughs again. His wife. She kind of gets him, a little bit.

He taps out a Tweet in Gabe's lyrics, but his own sentiment: _@gabrielsaporta you got a crew, i got a crew too._  
**  
The next night is a goddamn mess, the concert rough and the afterparty from hell. Gabe is drunk before he even gets there, drunk and hands-on and weirdly aggressive with the wrong people, in the sense that Pete knows this is going to get spread around the Internet.

And yeah, so what else is new? It will almost certainly get lost in the general shuffle, but for fuck's sake, why feed the beast for no reason? A little self-control, just a _little_. Fuck.

Gabe shrugs it off, laughs it off, says he'll do better and passes out in Pete's bed with his shoes still on, sprawled out like something spilled.

Pete doesn't even bother trying to sleep that night.

The next day Gabe is apologetic; he brings Pete a doughnut when they stop for gas, looking at him from behind those stupid thick black glasses with an awkward little smile and caution in his eyes.

"Dude, I'm sorry about that. I don't know--whoa. I got carried away. We cool?"

Pete looks at him for a minute. Gabe's skin looks all waxy and weird. There are shadows under his eyes that could be mistaken for bruises. His voice is a hoarse, gravelly mess.

Pete knows what all of that feels like from the inside. He knows what he wanted people to say to him at the time, the only thing he wanted.

He takes the doughnut and says, "Ice cold, dude," and Gabe laughs and hugs him. Gabe pretty clearly thinks that's the end of it. And it is. Pete isn't Gabe's keeper and he's not his mommy and it's not his job to tell Gabe what to do or to worry about him.

But that night at the show, Gabe's up there on stage, swanning around and putting on his show, and he's fucking _glowing_. His voice still sounds like shit, but a dead man could see how much Gabe loves performing, loves being the frontman, loves his fans.

And he's willing to throw all of that away out of some kind of obscure fucked-up principle of _bullshit_.

Gabe points at the crowd and says, "This is a new one, from our album that's gonna drop this summer. It's called 'Pete Wentz Is The Only Reason We're Famous.'"

And suddenly Pete's so angry he can't see straight.

He stays mad all the way through the rest of Cobra, through Metro Station and All Time Low, even through FOB's set. The other guys can tell; he catches all three of them shooting worried glances at him and each other from the corners of their eyes. Joe and Patrick keep bumping their shoulders against him when they cross the stage, short electric shocks of contact, reminders that they're there.

Brothers. Fucking _family_. They know each other this well, they know everything by sight and touch.

Gabe doesn't get to pretend that doesn't _count_.

They finish the encore and make their way offstage. Pete hands his bass off to the tech and pushes through the backstage mess. Gabe laughs when he sees him, offering a high five.

"Hey, man, sounded good tonight! You wanna--"

"Shut up."

Gabe stops, eyes wide and mouth open. "What?"

"Shut up and come with me."

"Pete, what the fuck?" Gabe follows him to the doors by the buses. The security staff shoot Pete questioning looks, but they step aside when he keeps going. No comment on diva behavior, but depending on how media-savvy they are, this might be in Perez's email by the morning. Fuck it.

"Pete, dude, what happened?" Gabe grabs his shoulder and Pete shrugs him off, shaking his head and walking to the bus. He's taking two steps for every one of Gabe's and for some reason that's pissing him off even more, like something that's been true all his life is being emphasized right now just to spite him.

"What the fuck?" Gabe follows Pete up the steps. "I wanted to talk to the people who stuck around, and then there's a party, so just--"

"What is your problem?" Pete tries to keep his voice cool, even though there's nobody around to hear it now. Yelling at Gabe almost always backfires. But damn, sometimes it's tempting.

"What, you want a personal chat? This can't wait until we're back on the road, seriously?"

"What is your _problem?_."

Gabe blinks. "I...don't have a problem. Except that you dragged me back here for no reason. What's _your_ problem?"

"Do you have any idea how lucky you are?"

"Fuck, not this." Gabe groans and thumps his head back against the wall. "Not from you, too. Not from you, of all people."

"You act like it's not even important, like you don't even give a shit about what you made happen." Pete jabs his fingers at Gabe's chest, his voice rising despite himself. "You, not me. I know the song's a joke, and whatever, but it's not fucking funny. _You_ did all of this. And it's awesome. Why are you acting like you don't even--"

"I can't believe you dragged me back here to lecture me." Gabe glares down at him, his lip curling in disgust. "This is fucked up. And you can fuck _off_ if you think I'm going to stand here and listen to it."

"This is what you always wanted. You're breaking through, people are hearing you, they _like_ you. You can't tell me this isn't what you wanted. I _know_."

"Yeah, this is what I wanted, Pete, but it isn't _how_ I wanted it. This is what I could get."

There's a long, icy pause where they stare at each other and Pete can't think of a thing to say. Finally Gabe cocks his head and his eyes get sharp, like he's thought of something else. "Why do I get the feeling this isn't even really what you're pissed about? If artistic integrity's really suddenly at the top of your list of concerns, I'm going to take a shit in your bed, and if you don't think I appreciate that kids come all the way out here to watch me jump around and grab my junk, you can go fuck yourself. Are you having another goddamn meltdown? Because I've gotta tell you, I have less than no interest in that shit."

Pete's chest hurts, like every breath he takes is getting stuck there and can't get out again. "Fuck you, Gabe. Fuck you, fuck you--"

"Yeah," Gabe says, his lip curling in a sneer. "Fuck me, for being a fuck-up. Not like _you_ , because you've never--"

That's so stupid Pete can't even listen to it, whatever Gabe might be about to say. Every word coming out of Gabe's mouth is wrong, missing the point, fucking infuriating. Pete doesn't realize what he's doing until he does it, reaching out through the dull haze of anger and shoving Gabe back against the wall.

Gabe shoves back without an instant of pause or hesitation, and Pete stumbles backward, losing his balance and falling down on the bed. He moves to sit up again but Gabe is suddenly straddling him, knees on either side of Pete's hips, heavy against Pete's stomach and weighting him down.

"I can't believe you," Gabe says, his voice choked with anger. Pete tries to struggle, to shove at him, and Gabe grabs his wrists, pinning them down by his sides. "I can't believe you're saying this shit to me, like you don't know, like you haven't been there and--"

If Gabe keeps not getting it, keeps hearing him wrong and hearing one thing when he's talking about something else, Pete might actually explode. It's not helping that he knows he's also _saying_ it all wrong, words tangling up in his throat and on his tongue and not coming out the way he means. He's not typing this out or writing it down, he's not hearing it in his head filtered through Patrick's voice; he's just trying to say it, and that's never been the thing he really knows how to do.

So he stops trying to do it at all, gives up on talking. He bucks up and twists under Gabe, wrenching one arm free and reaching up blindly. If he's trying to do anything, it's to grab Gabe's throat, choke him silent and listening, the way he and Patrick used to do when they lost their tempers with each other back in the old days, out on the road and fighting about which of them knew _better_ all of the secrets inside the half-written truths and lies they both knew front to back.

Maybe that's what he's trying to do, but he doesn't. His hand curves around the back of Gabe's neck instead and he pulls Gabe down into a kiss, hard and bruising and as hopelessly inarticulate and angry as everything he failed to say before.

Gabe doesn't react for a minute, except for tightening his knees against Pete's hips, and then he's kissing Pete back, rough and deep. He lets go of Pete's wrist, sliding that hand up to splay over Pete's chest and hold him down. His other hand moves up next to Pete's head, bracing himself while they kiss, his tongue thrusting aggressively into Pete's mouth.

Ashlee likes to start out like this, too, straddling his hips and holding him down, but she's as light as a bird over him, she moves easily with every roll of his hips and she laughs against his mouth while she kisses him. Gabe is heavy, solid; he really is holding Pete down. There's nothing gentle or funny about the way he's fucking Pete's mouth with his tongue, and Pete can feel the press of Gabe getting hard against his stomach. Pete's own dick is responding in kind and his hips rock up instinctively, finding friction in the way Gabe's body doesn't give an inch.

It's been years since they've done this, but they both remember the rhythm of it. The hand Gabe has pressed against Pete's chest flexes roughly, gathering Pete's t-shirt up off his stomach. Pete jerks his hips up harder and Gabe grinds down against him, dragging his teeth over Pete's lower lip as he pulls away from the kiss. His hand slides down away from Pete's shirt, nails raking lightly over the exposed skin of his stomach before moving to unsnap Pete's fly. Pete starts to make a noise and chokes on it as Gabe's mouth finds the side of his neck, sucking hard at the skin just above his collarbone.

Gabe always uses his teeth and his tongue when he does this, always leaves bright red and purple marks and laughs about them the next day. If Pete didn't have about fifty hoodies to choose from on tour, all of which cover that part of his neck, he would be seriously pissed. As it is he just groans some combination of _fuck you_ and _yes_ over and over again as Gabe bites down and then licks where it hurts, while he gets Pete's dick out from his jeans and then starts in on his own.

Gabe has those stupid big hands, long fingers he can wrap around both of them and jerk them off together while he bites down on Pete's collarbone itself this time, hard enough that Pete actually yells a little. He can picture how that's going to bruise, purple and black in the pattern of Gabe's teeth, and between thinking about that and the way Gabe's fingers tighten just a little and slide rough and good against him, his hips jerk and he's coming hot and fast over Gabe's hand.

Gabe strokes a few more times and then comes as well, lifting his head from Pete's neck and kissing him again, just as hard as before but slower, tongue sliding almost apologetically against where he bit Pete's lip. Pete kisses him back for a minute and then turns his head, taking a rough, deep breath that feels like it shakes him all the way down to his stomach.

"Holy shit," Gabe says softly, and Pete nods, coughing a little on the exhale. Gabe eases off of him, looking around the bunk and the floor. Pete sits up enough to pull his t-shirt the rest of the way off and hand it to him.

Gabe cleans them both off and then sits back on his heels on the floor, looking up at Pete with wide eyes. "Dude. Um."

Pete just nods again. He touches where Gabe bit him, three places that all make him hiss. Gabe winces in apology and Pete shakes his head, waving him off before he can say it.

"What brought that on?" Gabe says finally, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand. "I mean...any of it, the yelling too, not just the--"

"I love you," Pete says, his voice hoarse, and when Gabe's face spasms like he got shocked, he adds, "you fucking dumbass. We all love you. Me and your band and my band and fucking...Bill and Travis and the fucking kids, they all love you, and if you want to do some kind of bullshit blaze of glory thing because you think it means something about hedonism and the futility of existence or...or whatever it is you talk about, I don't really listen because it fucking makes my stomach hurt..." He stutters to a halt, trying to pick up the thread of his own sentence. "If you want to do that, then fine, do what you fucking want to do, but you don't get to think it doesn't matter or that the rest of us don't fucking _care_."

Gabe stares at him and then looks away, wiping his mouth. "Dude, it's not...like that. Really, it's not that serious and shit. You don't need to be _worrying_ about me. That's crazy."

"I don't know if you remember, but you had surgery on your vocal chords. And you're not doing shit to take care of your voice."

Gabe throws his hands in the air. "I know that! I think about that all the time. You don't even know, Pete."

"Then what the fuck, dude?"

"Pete, I might lose my fucking voice. Then that's it, I'm done. No more band. No more...anything. But that could happen even if I _am_ super careful. They don't know. There's _no way to know_. So...prepare for the worst and you won't be disappointed, right?"

Pete stares at him and then flops down on his back, forcing a frustrated half-laugh. "You've got to be kidding me."

"No, not really. It's not funny, anyway, and when I'm kidding I'm pretty much always funny."

"Okay, a, that's not true, and b, you're an idiot."

"A, yes it is, and b, fuck off, I'm right."

Pete points blindly in Gabe's direction. "Prepare for the worst? That's what you're basing this on? You think the worst case scenario is you lose your voice and your band and then, what, you just become an angry drunk in a gutter somewhere?" He takes a breath but steamrolls on before Gabe can answer, still addressing all of it to the ceiling. "No, you unbelievable moron. You lose your voice, then we find you something else."

Gabe snorts. "What, I can take over for you on bass-playing and annoying-Patrick duties in Fall Out Boy?"

Pete snaps his fingers sharply. "Hey. We don't joke about that around here. Not on our own _bus_ , dude. That's bad luck."

"Sorry," Gabe says, and he actually sounds like he means it. People think musicians are superstitious, but it's all _true_.

"Fucking...turn around three times and spit, or something." Pete shakes his head and closes his eyes. "But we'll find you a new band. Or you can start producing. Or you can fucking take up painting with your own shit and I will promote the hell out of it, because anything creative that you do is going to be fucking amazing and I will stand behind that until they fucking cart me away."

He can't see Gabe in the long moment of silence that follows. He concentrates on his own breath, the beat of his heart in his chest, the throbbing ache in his neck.

"Worst-case scenario is I have my own line of Clandestine shit art?" Gabe says finally.

"Yes. I will have an entire clothing line based on your shit art. I will get it tattooed on my body."

"Wow. That's _way_ different from what I thought the worst thing was." Gabe's quiet again for a minute and then Pete feels the mattress shift under his weight. "Also, you're fucking crazy. Move over."

Pete shifts around so he's tucked up between Gabe and the wall. Gabe lies down and stretches his legs out, then pulls Pete back against him like a teddy bear, arms locked tight around Pete's waist.

"I'm on your crew, huh?" Gabe mutters against Pete's neck. His voice is rougher than just his throat trouble, a little unsteady.

"Fuck, yes," Pete says, exasperated. "What the hell do you think I've been trying to tell you this whole time?"

"I don't really listen when you talk, either."

"Go to sleep." Pete holds still until he's pretty sure Gabe has drifted off, then bites his lower lip, staring blankly at the wall of the bunk. Fix one thing, fuck up another worse in the process. A Pete Wentz special.  
**  
He goes looking for Patrick in the morning. It's not a surprise to find him communing with his coffee cup, his morning hat pulled down low over his eyes.

"There you are," he says, gesturing vaguely when Pete sits down next to him. "I hope the first words out of your mouth are a thank you for stalling the buses for a fucking hour last night while you and Gabe yelled at each other."

Pete doesn't say anything, just rests his forehead on Patrick's shoulder, hiding his face.

"Uh-oh." Patrick doesn't move, but he's quiet for a minute, probably going through his mental catalogue and trying to figure out which particular mood this one is. "What happened?"

Pete mumbles into his t-shirt and knows Patrick will translate. "I think I did something dumb."

"You probably did." Patrick takes a sip of his coffee, careful not to dislodge him. "But you'll figure out a way to fix it."

Pete takes a shaky breath. "Like, I think I need to call Ashlee, I did something dumb."

Patrick looks sideways at him. "Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Okay, call her." Patrick puts his cup down and pats Pete's back, quick and light. "Then come find me. We'll play Xbox or something and not talk about it."

Pete smiles a little bit. "Promise?"

"We will not talk about a fucking thing."

"Have I told you lately that you're my favorite?"

"Go call Ashlee."

Pete takes his phone out of his pocket and looks at it. "Yeah."  
**  
Ashlee has a million things to tell him, and she sounds so happy. Her voice makes him think of sunlight and warmth, and home the way LA is home, different from how Chicago is home and how tour buses are home. He thinks about lying tangled up with her in bed, and how his head shuts up because everything is safe, and his throat closes up. He can't talk, he just chokes and mumbles his way through her stories, staring down at his free hand twisted tight and anxious in his lap.

"Babe?" she says finally. "Are you all right?"

He doesn't know how to answer that, so he doesn't, just clears his throat into the phone and punches himself in the thigh.

"Are you not sleeping?" she asks, worry cutting clear and sharp through her voice. She zeroes in on these things because she loves him, and she _knows_ him. By now she knows his patterns and his tics, knows all of the stupid shit he does and some approximate version of why. That almost makes it all worse, that she probably already knows what he's going to say, or will know it as soon as he opens his mouth.

"Pete?" she prompts again. "Are you there?"

"I'm here," he says, rubbing at his eye with the heel of his hand and wondering why he's even bothering, why is he _doing_ this. It's not like anything good can come out of it.

"How are you sleeping?"

"Like usual." He looks down at the ground between his feet, then up at the sky, and tells himself to man the fuck up. "Ashlee? I need to tell you something."

There's a slight pause, only a second or two but he feels it thudding in his chest. "Okay," she says. "I'm listening."

"Gabe and I." It sticks in his throat and he stares down at the ground again, dry-swallowing the words before he tries again. "Last night, Gabe and I kind of...messed around. I guess. I mean, he's been being an idiot and I was trying to get through to him and I guess we just..."

Another pause, longer this time, and he bites his lip to keep from breaking for as long as he can, until he finally can't stand it. "Ashlee?"

"Yeah." She sounds a little distant, but not angry or upset. "Yeah, I'm here, babe."

"Say something."

"I don't know what to tell you, Pete. I'm a little confused." She laughs a little, not like it's really funny but more like...well, what she said. Confused. "I mean, we've talked about this. A bunch of times. I'm not sure why you're so upset, when we've talked about this."

He pulls the phone away from his ear and looks at it for a minute, and now _he's_ confused, too. "Yeah, we've talked about it, but I've always called you first. Or you were there, or...I lost control this time, Ash. I didn't even think to..."

"Pete, I know how you are with your friends. Especially when they need you, or when you think they ought to need you and you really want to..." She sighs, and it echoes weirdly over the phone. "I know how you are when you really want to help, babe. I _get_ that. I've told you a hundred times that I get that."

"I still should've--"

"Well, I appreciate it when you do, but I'm not going to kick you out and set your stuff on fire over one slip-up, okay?" He can hear her fumbling with the phone now, switching it to her other ear maybe, and he wonders if she's holding Bronx. "I don't want you hooking up with teenagers, or running off with random people, but your friends are different. Your friends have _always_ been different, we agreed on that right at the beginning. I mean, for one thing, I know where to find them if I _do_ need to kick some ass."

He has to laugh at that; it comes out kind of high-pitched and weird, but it is a laugh. "I would pay money to see you kick Gabe's ass."

"Oh, I could take him. Don't even joke about it. He's completely a big baby and even if he wasn't, Victoria's told me his weaknesses."

He laughs again and presses his hand harder against his eye. "You're not mad?"

"I'm not mad." She's quiet for a minute again. Breathing is a little easier this time while he waits; it doesn't hurt in his chest as much. "I think...I think we'll talk about it when I'm there. That's next week already, you know that?"

"Yeah, I know." He has presents for them, stashed away on the bus. He's been collecting stuff since their last visit, even though neither of them _needs_ any more random crap. He can't help it.

"Are you excited?" He can't quite put a name on the note in her voice now. Wistful, maybe. Not quite sure. "To see me and the baby?"

He closes his eyes and wishes he could put his heart into his voice, could sing her a love song that has all of it inside. Just coming up with the words isn't enough. "So much, you have no idea."  
**  
When he's not on tour, he forgets what it's like. When he is on tour, it seems like there never has been anything else, and never will be. It's a machine, or maybe it's a hungry monster; whichever way he thinks of it, it's definitely not just something they do. _Tour_. It grinds stuff up and consumes it alive.

It's all lights and screaming voices and strings under his fingers and electricity in his veins and chasing down nerves with beer and chasing down exhaustion with coffee and feeling the road moving under the bus, moving moving moving while he lies there awake and breathing breathing breathing. Sometimes he thinks he might be reaching some kind of transcendent state, where he can see the true pattern of the universe, or something. Other times he's pretty sure he's really going to go crazy for good this time.

It's not good for him, it's not good for any of them, and he can't imagine how he could live with the idea of never doing it again. Normal people, real people, how do they do it? How do they exist without the possibility of this in their head?

He asks Gabe a rambling, half-coherent version of that question on the road in the middle of the night, staring up at the ceiling and feeling his breath hitch in his chest every time the tires cross a pothole. Gabe's not really awake, his face pressed tight into the curve of Pete's neck and his breath hot and damp against Pete's skin; too hot, too damp, it's uncomfortable, but Pete doesn't try to push him off. They haven't talked about what happened, and it hasn't happened again, but they've settled back into the old rhythms of touching and joking and lying in the bunk fitted up against each other like cracked pieces of something. This is what feels natural to Pete, having his people around him as tactile grounding points, things he can touch and hold on to. While that hasn't always been something Gabe wants, right now it seems to be. They can help each other.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Gabe tells him, his tongue darting out to wet his lips and brushing over Pete's pulse, a sudden touch that makes Pete jerk a little in surprise. "Don't crack up on us now, dude, okay? We're liking this whole thing where you're the sane, stable one."

"Yeah." Pete nods and shifts around a little, turning more onto his back so Gabe's mouth isn't against his throat. "I don't know what I'm talking about either."

"Should be stoned if you're going to talk about existential shit like that."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Cool." Gabe sighs, and Pete looks sideways at him, watching Gabe's eyes move back and forth under his lids.

"Ashlee and Bronx will be here tomorrow," he says, and Gabe nods slightly, not opening his eyes. "Their flight gets in around noon."

"I know. You've been talking about it for days." Pete shrugs and Gabe pulls away, turning onto his back as well and blinking up at the ceiling. "Hey, does that mean I can't sleep over here?"

Pete's been talking about it for days but Gabe never put that last little element together. Typical. "That's exactly what it means, compadre."

"Don't even." Gabe frowns slightly. "Kicking me out into the street, huh?"

"Well, you know how it is." Pete shrugs again, searching for the right joke for the moment, the right way to turn it all into nothing. "With the wife in town, and all."

"The wife." Gabe shapes and breaks each syllable distinctly. "And here I thought we really had something special, man."

He can tell that that came from the exact same impulse, to make a joke and make sure there was nothing of substance left to cause trouble, but it doesn't fucking work at all and they both lie there in silence for a long, awkward moment that makes Pete feel like his heart is gnawing on the inside of his chest.

"You know I told her, right?" Pete asks as casually as he can. "I mean, I kind of had to tell her."

"Yeah." Gabe's voice is careful, distant. "I figured."

Pete reaches blindly and runs his fingers over some part of Gabe, probably an arm. "It's cool. I mean, she's cool. She knows how it is, and we're all friends, and...it's cool, okay?"

Gabe doesn't answer, but he catches Pete's hand and brings it up to rest on his stomach, Gabe's knuckles brushing against his. They lie there in silence for a while, listening to the road move under the tires.

"I guess I'll have to go back over to our bus and see what they've done to my bunk," Gabe says finally. "I bet Victoria's storing her shoes there, or something."

"Probably." Pete nods and puts his arm over his face, eyes hidden away in the crook of his elbow, the clammy feel of his own skin a relief and distraction. "But it's only for a couple of days."  
**  
Ashlee doesn't take up nearly as much space in the bed as Gabe. Pete can stretch his legs all the way out, and even fling one arm out to the side. Their bed at home is a lot bigger than this, but this still feels nice, still feels _right_ \-- being tucked into the bunk with her, arms and legs finding ways to intertwine with each other.

"Hi," he says, even though she's been there for fourteen hours, even though he's said _hi_ to her at least twenty-seven times.

She laughs and kisses his cheek, her hand skating down his chest to rest on his stomach, just over the tattoo. "Hi."

"I love you." He's said that at least as many times, if not more, and she laughs again and kisses him for real.

"You're a dork," she says. He nods, because there's no way to argue with that, and they're quiet for a little while, watching Bronx sleep down at the foot of the bed where he's tucked into a nest of blankets like a baby bird.

"That was cute, earlier," Ashlee says, her voice sleepy and mellow and warm. Pete flips back through the day in his head, trying to figure out what she means, but there was a lot of cuteness going on. It was a good day. It was...everything was really happy.

"What was?" he says finally, tracing his finger along her collarbone. She's so crazy pale. Her skin is like paper. He could write lyrics up her throat, across her shoulder, down her arm.

"Gabe playing with Bronx." She lifts her head and smiles at him. "Wasn't it?"

Gabe had held the baby up and looked at him with utter seriousness and then proceeded to tell him the story of the Cobra. Bronx didn't even crack a smile, which according to Gabe meant that he believed every word and was going to be the next vessel of the Cobra's message on earth, ready to take over whenever Gabe got sick of this shit. Personally, Pete thought it more likely meant that Bronx had a sense of humor with unnervingly high standards. They were going to have to work on that if Pete had any hope of being a cool dad once Bronx started school.

He took a picture of Gabe holding Bronx on his phone, blinking down at the image on the screen. Gabe looked exhausted, his hat pulled down low to his eyes. But he was holding the baby comfortably, easily. Good old Uncle Gabe, Pete thought, you would totally send the kids outside with him at Thanksgiving, and he posted the thing to his blog.

Then he put his phone away and took his kid back, because extended band family or not, he only had about forty-eight hours of time with his _family_ -family, and he didn't want to lose out on much.

"Yeah," he says, blinking away the memory and smiling at her. "I wonder how weird the comments on that picture are going to be."

"Mostly cute, only a little weird, I bet." She rests her head on his chest and breathes in slowly. He doesn't know why she does that. He smells like tour and he knows it. "Baby?"

"Yeah?"

"You still want to talk about it?"

He thinks about it for a minute, winding his fingers into her hair just behind her ear. "Not really."

"You sure?"

"You said you're okay. I believe you. And it won't happen again."

She sighs and pinches his stomach a little, hard enough that he jumps. "You're missing the point again, genius."

"Yeah, well..." He can't really think of a good comeback for that. "That's my superpower."

"Seriously." She sits up, planting her hand firmly on his chest and looking down at him. "The thing about you, Mr. Wentz--"

"Is this going to the naughty schoolgirl place? Because I don't have my glasses, or the coat, or--"

"Stop it." She pushes down a little, and he bites his lip, shutting up as the air presses out of his lungs. "The thing about you is that you collect people. You collect fucked-up, broken people, and you love them, and you keep them, and you try to fix them. You _can't_ fix people, nobody can, but you keep _trying_ , babe, and people who know you _know_ that, and they love you for it."

He blinks up at her, her pretty pale face all framed in the light behind her, and he doesn't know what to say.

" _I_ love you for it," she says, and rubs her hand slowly up and down his chest. "So it's okay. Okay? Don't worry. I get it. I get _you,_ , Peter Lewis whatever whatever."

He makes a face at her, but it's halfhearted, and he isn't sure if he wants to kiss her or maybe start to cry. "I don't deserve you."

"It's mutual." She leans in and kisses him, taking the decision out of his hands, and he slides his hands up to tangle in her hair. "I love you."

"I love you too." He blinks, trying to focus his eyes on hers when they're so close. "So you're really really totally okay?"

"Jesus _Christ_ ," she sighs, ducking her head in mock defeat. "What's it going to take, something signed in blood?"

"No blood allowed on the bus. We had to make a rule. It was Andy's fault."

She laughs and lies down next to him again, nestling in close with her head on his shoulder. "Dork."

"Takes one to know one." He closes his eyes. "That was pretty, the stuff about me collecting broken people. How'd you come up with that?"

"Baby." She shakes her head and presses closer. "You found me, didn't you? And you've kept me around."  
**  
The car pulls away and he waves, bouncing a little on his toes so he can see through the back window. Ashlee waves back, then holds Bronx's hand up so he waves, too. Pete's eyes sting suspiciously and he rubs at them with his free hand, the other one still waving until the car is out of sight.

When it's finally gone, he stands there for another minute, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He knows the other guys will hang out if he wants to, or leave him alone if he wants that, but the problem is that he isn't sure _what_ he wants. He hates that it's this complicated, this hard. It wasn't before.

But now he has two things he wants, two whole _lives_ he wants, and he thought they could both exist on the same gameboard but it's starting to look like maybe he was wrong. What the fuck is he supposed to do if he was wrong?

He shakes his head and starts back toward where the vans and buses are parked, vaguely wondering if he should go bother some of the kids. Cassadee and Jersey could be plenty distracting, or Jack. Or maybe he could drag them all together onto one bus; that would work perfectly, actually. Just get as many people as possible together in one place and encourage them a little until they were loud and rowdy and crazy and he could let those waves of energy take him out of his own head.

But for some reason he ends up walking right back to his own bus and back to his bunk, tapping vaguely at the wall next to Joe's as he passes but not stopping to talk. Joe makes a muffled noise of acknowledgement; sounds like his mouth is full, which probably isn't a bad idea. Pete should go find something to eat, too, in a little bit. He'll just crash out for a few minutes first.

He flops facedown on his bunk and buries his face in his pillow. It smells like Ashlee's hair and Bronx's spit. It's gross and awesome at once.

"Pete back here?" comes a voice from the front of the bus, and Joe makes another garbled noise, this one an affirmative. Pete doesn't bother to turn over, just lies there breathing in half-useful air through a poly-cotton blend. Maybe whoever's there will think he's dead and leave him alone.

Instead whoever it is sits on the lower half of his legs, which fucking hurts. He groans a curse into the pillow and twists around as best he can, glaring at...Gabe, of course, sitting there breaking his fucking legs and smirking at him.

"Hey dude," Gabe says. He sounds tired and he looks like shit again, even with his sunglasses on.

"What's up," Pete mumbles, trying to kick his legs free without much luck. "Get off me, you moron, that hurts."

"Oh, sorry." Gabe swings around, turning and flopping and twisting until he's comfortably stretched out next to Pete. He kicks Pete twice and elbows him in the neck in the process. Next tour Pete is throwing a diva fit and demanding a private bus with a door that locks. Or he's just not going on tour with Gabe Saporta. Or he's just never going on tour again. Right now those are all equally attractive.

"That was nice," Gabe says suddenly, with that tone people get when they've been wanting to say something for hours, rehearsing it in their head, just waiting for an opportunity where they can pretend they're making it sound casual.

"What was? You trying to break my fucking legs?"

"God, don't be such a whiner." Gabe rolls his eyes. "No, seeing Ash and the kid. That is one huge baby you have, dude. I mean, he's, like...solid. He's pretty cool."

Pete blinks. "Thanks, man."

"He's smart, too. He totally got everything I was saying about the Cobra."

"Stop trying to draft my kid into your cult."

"Fuck off." Gabe's frowning a little, his eyes sharp behind his glasses, like he's trying to find the words for what he wants to say. "And it was cool, watching you guys. You and him and Ashlee. It was...I dunno. Nice. I mean, I don't know if it's ever gonna be for me, but..." He laughs suddenly, shaking his head and throwing his hand over his forehead so it shields his eyes. "Dude, I suck at talking about this stuff. Just, like, watching you guys, I kept thinking damn, look at Pete, all grown up."

Pete shakes his head and opens his mouth to tell Gabe to shut up and go get them some food or something before this gets all weird, but Gabe starts talking again.

"I envy you, man. You've got it good, you know? You've got it really good."

"Yeah." Pete turns over again, kicking Gabe in the shins half by accident and half for revenge. "So do you, though. We all have it pretty good."

"Yeah, but you've got the whole _thing_. Wife and kid and house in LA and...you know, fame and fortune and whatever. Perez Hilton knows your name."

"That is not a fucking _perk_." Pete buries his face in the pillow and breathes slowly again, in and out, before he turns his head enough to address Gabe. "Don't envy me. Just live your life. This is the best time of your life, right now, okay? Enjoy it."

It comes out sounding sharp, harsh, and Gabe looks at him with obvious surprise. His sunglasses have slipped down his nose and Gabe's looking over the frames, a weird, comical angle that the look on Gabe's face makes less funny. "Dude, I didn't mean to hit any buttons."

"You didn't. I'm fine."

"You sure? Because that sounded kind of pissed."

Pete shrugs and tries to think of something to say, a defense or an explanation. He doesn't have one, so he shrugs again. "Whatever, man. I'm fine."

Gabe nods slightly and Pete hides his face again, forcing himself to breathe really slowly, all the way down to his toes. The silence lasts for maybe a whole minute and a half before Gabe has to start talking again. Fucking _Gabe_.

"I'm just, like, pretty sure that once you're married and have a kid you're not allowed to say other stuff was the best time of your life anymore. That's pretty much supposed to be the high point, right, and everything else was just--"

"There's not a _rulebook_ ," Pete tells the pillow. He feels Gabe's fingers thread into his hair at the nape of his neck, half petting and half pulling, and he refuses to look up. He's going to suffocate right there like that, and the cops can arrest Gabe and it will be no less than he deserves for starting this.

"Dude," Gabe says awkwardly, "are you saying...I mean, are you _not_ happy, or something? You were bouncing off the fucking walls getting ready to see them, I thought being mister old married guy was your _thing_ now, or--"

"God, shut _up_ ," Pete groans, giving up and turning over again. He rolls into Gabe instead of away, his shoulder coming down firmly against Gabe's chest so his body's half on top of him. "Just shut up."

He can't answer Gabe's insinuations because the answer is _yes_ and _no_ and a million conditionals and in-betweens. It hurts his head to think about it, makes him sick to his stomach, because he _knows_ he's betraying people by not being able to give a straight, simple, instant answer. He would give anything to be the man he's supposed to be, the man he's _expected_ to be, one who really did become an adult when he got married, one who doesn't feel like half of everything he does is pretending, if not a flat-out lie.

Gabe's arm curves around Pete's waist, familiar by now, and Pete lets out a sharp, frustrated huff of breath. "It's okay, dude," Gabe says cautiously. Pete shakes his head again. "I won't tell anybody, or whatever you're worried about. We're cool."

"There's nothing to tell," Pete says, and this time he _does_ mean to sound that sharp, that cold. He keeps his eyes straight ahead, fixed on the wall, refusing to look back and risk Gabe seeing anything on his face. "I'm not explaining anything right and you don't get it. Let's just forget it, okay? Let's go find a bar or something. Get lit. Find Joe and Patrick and your guys and just go--"

He pulls away from Gabe hard, half-falls out of the bunk and starts fumbling through the stuff on the floor, looking for another shirt, and maybe a hat or something. If they're going off the buses he needs to be armored for war. "Come on."

He can feel Gabe watching him for a few minutes, and he know without looking that Gabe wants to argue, Gabe wants a fight, but it's not going to happen. Pete's going to get drunk and he's going to fall back onto the bus just in time to leave the state, and in the morning they'll be hours from here and the whole world is going to look different. That's tour. He's lived with that for years, and he can count on it, and thank God for that today.  
**  
Being drunk is the best idea he's had in ages.

"Why the fuck am I the sober one?" Gabe asks, holding Pete against his hip like a doll while he opens the door to the bus. Pete just laughs, because sober is all relative; he kissed Gabe twice on the stumble back from the bar and could taste the alcohol on his tongue, sour-sweet-sharp.

"It's like the whole world is upside down." Gabe hauls Pete up the stairs and shoves him toward the couch. "Park it, Wentz. If you puke on yourself, I'm going to take pictures and laugh at you."

"And then you'll clean me up," Pete mumbles, closing his eyes against the threat of the room starting to spin. He doesn't want spinning. Doesn't like to spin. That's a lie, he loves it, but that's another kind, another place, a hotter touch, a better fuck...wrong again, and fuck, that's a whole _other_ problem waiting for whenever he gets back to Los Angeles.

"Loser." Gabe sits down next to Pete's head and rumples up his hair. "You, P-dubs, are a loser."

"Tell me about it." Pete opens his eyes just a sliver, looking up at Gabe through his lashes. "Hey, Gabe?"

"What?"

"All that shit I was saying before?"

"You've been talking nonstop for like six hours. Which part?"

"About this being the best part of your life."

Gabe winds a lock of Pete's hair around his fingers. "You want me to forget about it?"

"No, I want to tell you I fucking meant it."

Gabe shakes his head and twists another bit of hair against the first one. "I don't get you at all, dude."

Pete closes his eyes again, something hot and heavy settling in his stomach. "Me neither."

Gabe's palm slides over his forehead, weirdly cool. "You need to relax."

"Yeah, I know." His stomach hurts. He doesn't want to think about it. "No, wait, I don't want to relax. I want to have some fucking fun."

"Didn't we do that?" Gabe cuts off as Pete sits up and twists around on the couch, moving to straddle Gabe's lap and push him back against the window with a kiss. Pete's hands settle on Gabe's shoulders, gripping tight, not letting him pull back or turn away. To be fair, Gabe resists for less than thirty seconds.

It's not as rough as the last time, but it isn't gentle; Pete bites Gabe's lip and Gabe slides his hands up under Pete's clothes and grips his waist hard, fingers digging in until they meet the resistance of the bone. Pete groans low under his breath and leans into the pressure, wanting that, wanting _more_ than that, wanting the shit he does and the choices he makes written on his skin so they're undeniable, because that makes them true.

Gabe's hands shift and grip more securely and he half throws Pete down on his back, kneeling over him and looking down with something unreadable in his eyes, dark and shifting and even if Pete can't name it, he _wants_ it. He licks his lips and meets Gabe's eyes, arching his hips up off the couch as he moves to undo his jeans.

"What do you want?" Gabe asks, and Pete bites his own lip hard against the urge to laugh, because that's the question, isn't it, for all the marbles.

"Let's fucking set ourselves on fire."

Gabe rolls his eyes and yanks Pete's jeans down to his knees, pushing his underwear along with them. "You're fucking crazy," Gabe says, wrapping his hand around Pete's dick and stroking roughly until Pete's hard and fighting not to make any sound. "I don't even know what to do with you, one day you're all Mr. Wise Old Man telling me to get my shit together, then you're drunk and talking about how what I've got is better than what you've got, and..."

He cuts off as he takes Pete in his mouth, fast and deep, tongue pressing against flesh hot and wet and tight, and Pete's self-control breaks in a helpless moan. Gabe gives head like he does everything, flat-out and aggressive and not holding back. Pete counts on that. He doesn't know about everybody else in the world, or even _anybody_ else in the world, but he at least needs people he can count on both ways, to hold back around him and to give him everything they've got even if it hurts.

Gabe scrapes with his teeth, digs his fingers hard into Pete's thighs with one hand, grips roughly at the base of Pete's cock with the other, and it all hurts, cutting through the mess in Pete's head sweet and hot. He knows he's making noises like he's auditioning for porn, embarrassing and needy and too loud, but he can't stop, isn't really sure he wants to stop.

Gabe pulls off and starts jacking him, breathing roughly and licking his lips. "Get the fuck out of your head," he says, and Pete looks up, startled at the note in his voice. It's shadowed, knowing, and Gabe's eyes match it; they stare at each other for just a beat too long and then Gabe goes down again, sucks him hard and deep and Pete wasn't ready for that yet, wasn't that close, but there's no room to argue and he comes with a desperation that edges into pain.

Gabe swallows him down and then sits back on his heels, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and watching Pete with that same intensity in his eyes. "Crazy fucker," he says after a minute, like he's pronouncing judgment. Pete just nods and reaches for him, catching the belt loops on Gabe's pants and pulling him in closer. He can taste himself in Gabe's mouth when they kiss, and he groans a little, sliding his hand down to rub at Gabe's cock through his jeans.

"Yeah, no," Gabe mutters, catching Pete's wrist and then carefully getting to his feet, pulling Pete up off the couch by his shoulders. "You can get me back in the morning. Right now it's time for midgets to turn into pumpkins. Bed."

"Bite me," Pete says, but it's halfhearted. He lets Gabe put him to bed, even tuck him in under the questionably-clean sheets, and there's a whole minute and a half where he thinks he might pass out and sleep all the way through until morning. But of course it never works out that way.

He stares at the wall for a while, trying to trick himself into falling asleep by listening to the steady rhythm of Joe's snoring, until Gabe nudges him in the ribs.

"What?" Pete mumbles, burrowing down further into the blanket. He doesn't want to talk about it, about anything. He wants to go to sleep. God, let him fucking go to sleep.

"You were happy."

Pete looks back over his shoulder at Gabe. "What?"

"When Ashlee and Bronx were here, you were happy. Happier than you are when they're not around. Don't pretend you weren't just because...I don't even know why the fuck you'd do that, but don't. They're you're family. They make you happy. That's a good thing."

Pete takes a breath, then another, trying to think of something to say. Nothing's swimming to the top of the swamp of beer and exhaustion. "Okay."

"Don't blow it just because you can, asshole. That's my gig. I think that's what I'm trying to say."

"I'm just a fuckup." Pete turns onto his stomach, burying his face in the sliver of pillow Gabe left him. "Just the way it is."

"You're not a fuckup. You're a goddamn cockroach. Survive anything and be around when we're all dead."

That's so laughably wrong Pete doesn't even know where to start. He shakes his head again and tries to drag a breath through the pillow.

"I know life advice is funny coming from me. But whatever, dude. I'm just saying." Gabe sighs and kisses the back of Pete's neck, just below the hairline, light and quick. It makes Pete's skin prickle all the way down his spine. "You were happy when they were here."  
**  
Back in LA Pete sleeps and steadies himself out, remembering the flip side of tour. The real world, slower-paced and not as electric, analog instead of digital, where sometimes things that feel good don't burn just because they can.

Ashlee's gearing up for filming, and making appearances for the first stages of promotion, and even though the theory's the same behind music and TV, the practicalities are so different it leaves him blinking against spotlights. He doesn't always recognize her when she leaves the house, all sharp-edged and surface-polished to a painful mirror glare, all her armor on for the cameras. If he's going with her, it's less unsettling because he's got his own shields up, red alert, let the motherfuckers bring it. If he's staying behind, it's...weird as fuck.

He always knows her when she comes home again, though. Tired and glassy-eyed from the lights and noise and booze, drooping a little and her lips chapped under the bright color from re-applying again and again. He helps her out of her shoes and her dress and tumbles her into their bed, crawling up the sheets after her and wrapping her up and kissing her until she's his again.

They don't have real-people lives, and he knows that, knows there's nothing normal about firing off a hundred characters to Twitter about how he hates having photographers following him and his kid, much less when that Tweet gets dissected and discussed on half a dozen different blogs by the time he and the kid get home again, much _much_ less when those discussions get routed to him by the Google Alert he has out on his own name. They don't have real-people lives, but they _are_ real people; the lives they're living are unreal in a way that makes sense by now, that's practiced, that fits like an only slightly uncomfortable second skin.

He's sleeping and he's steadier but his mind still keeps whirring away in circles, never just shutting the fuck down and letting him be _still_. Always words, never pictures, nowadays. He Tweets them and scribbles down proto-lyrics that aren't even that, that will never make it past that stage, because he knows the different kinds of word soup his head makes and this isn't really the writing part. This is churning up his life and making fertilizer, the writing will come somewhere down the road, a couple turns of the seasons from now.

He makes a few blog posts, and a lot more aborted drafts of blog posts; it's a few weeks before he realizes that he's been helplessly throwing knives at the same subject at least half a dozen times without being able to pin it down or make it say anything.

It's what started crawling around in his brain with Gabe, the problem of how this can be the best time of his life, when he meant what he told Gabe about the first rush of breaking through being the best time. They both _are_ ; he wouldn't trade that insane roller-coaster stretch of years to make what he has now come sooner, but he wouldn't give this up to go back to then, either. He wants both. And being himself, spoiled child, Peter Pan, he wants both _at once_. He's been trying really fucking hard to make that happen.

 _who says u cant have it all_ , he types into the Twitter app, but he switches it off before he can hit send. Asking for trouble.

He sits down later and tries again to write it out, typing into the blank box of the update page for his blog, biting at a hangnail on his thumb as he struggles to get the words to _work_. They're twisting and struggling and sliding away from him and it all ends up flat, guarded, trying too hard. Bullshit.

He switches the computer off and walks away for a while.

It finally clicks at three AM, of course; he doesn't know why he even tries to live on a normal person's schedule after all these years inside his own head, where the game is played by his own rules. He can't sleep, there's no chance of sleep, at least not for a few more hours but it's okay, because he's home, and whenever he _does_ fall into bed he can stay there until Ashlee leaves for the gym and he goes on baby-duty. Definitely enough hours for those same fucked-up internal rules.

It's the Gmail box he ends up typing into, not his blog, and there's no good reason for that but that's how it rolls and who is he to argue?

 _the thing is that its like playing with fire, or running with fire, or maybe being on fire. there's fire, okay? and it's amazing, it's perfect, you're more fucking alive than you ever have been, but it burns you out. it fucking burns you up._

He rubs his eyes, feeling the dry achy burn behind the lids. He walks to the refrigerator for a bottle of whatever energy drink is in there this week and does a few jumping jacks in the kitchen before coming back to the desk again.

 _but its addictive, once you taste it you can't live without it. you know that. we all know that. taste it and it tastes so good and you can never walk away from that. thats why the old guys never quit even when ppl laugh at them. cant live without it. blood for vampires._

He reads it over again. Close. Not quite what he means, but close. He never will get it exactly right, or at any rate he never has.

 _you still miss it even though you know_ he types. _only by you i mean me. always end up wanting everything, ive never been good at moderation._

He clicks send before he can think about it too much and downs the rest of his drink, his leg jittering under the table, knee bumping against the underside over and over again until Hemmy groans in complaint from the next room.

It's three hours later in New York, but Gabe's either not sleeping or up early. _You're totally crazy_ , the reply says. _It's awesome. I think I get what you mean, but you're nuts. Vampires, really? You sound like GWay. Ha ha._

Pete rolls his eyes and types in a quick reply. _fuck you._

 _Come to New York_ , bounces back. _We'll hang._

Pete looks at that for a long moment, bumping his knee against the table again. _no_ , he types finally, _u come to la_.  
**  
They've been Twittering jokes about Gabe sleeping on the couch since tour ended. When Gabe gets to LA, he seems to think that's actually going to be _true_.

"You're kind of a dumbass," Pete says, rolling his eyes and picking up Gabe's suitcase from the living-room floor. "I'm a rock star, remember? I have a fucking guest room."

"Oh, excuse me, Mr. Rock Star," Gabe says with exaggerated awe. "Fuck you very much."

"Watch it in front of the kid, dude."

Gabe just laughs at that, picking Bronx up and holding him up in the air above his head. Pete walks backward down the hall to the guest room, watching that.

It's all family. One way or another, it's all love.

The two of them end up sprawled across each other and the guest-room bed that night, after Bronx is asleep and Ashlee's on the phone with her sister. Pete threads his fingers through Gabe's hair and tugs lightly. Gabe tilts his head back to look at him, crosses his eyes, and sticks out his tongue.

"The single is doing fucking awesome," Pete says, trying to grab Gabe's tongue and getting his fingers bitten for his trouble. "It's going to do it, man. Gonna go number one. You're going to rule the world."

"Dude." Gabe shakes his head slowly, then starts laughing. It's not Gabe's usual raucous, too-loud, on the edge of too-much laugh. It's almost a giggle, almost small. "I can't even think about it half the time."

Pete traces the arch of Gabe's eyebrows, one at a time. Gabe looks good, his eyes clear, the shadows under them just standard-issue caffeine abuse and time zone swaps instead of too much craziness. Maybe it was Pete's excellent bullshit advice, or the awkward tour-bus sex. Maybe it was just getting off tour and not having to feed the beast every hour of the day. Maybe it was all of those things, maybe it was something else entirely.

And maybe Pete's got a habit of seeing things that aren't there, sometimes.

"It's like this might actually happen," Gabe says softly, looking across the room. "It's like...this is real."

"I told you." Pete stills his hand for a moment, pressed over Gabe's forehead. "I fucking told you, man."

"What the fuck do I _do_ with it?"

"Roll with it." Pete pulls his hand away and stretches out more comfortably, blinking in the dim light. "Try not to get caught with your pants off on-camera."

"Yeah, I'd hate to steal your gig." Pete smacks the top of his head and Gabe punches him in the knee, and then they're quiet for a few minutes, just breathing.

"Seriously, though," Gabe says. "What am I going to do if I have to be successful?"

Pete breathes in, breathes out, stops himself from saying anything about thanking God for even getting the chance. That's the kind of thing you have to just know without being told it.

"Be amazing," he says instead, and finds Gabe's mouth with his.


End file.
